Masters’ to show off their gardens

By James A. Johnson | The Newport Daily News

Thursday

Jul 11, 2013 at 12:01 AMJul 11, 2013 at 11:13 PM

Visitors to the home of Miriam and John Byrne of Middletown are sure to experience a visual treat.

Double knockout red rose bushes line the stone wall in front of the home on Mitchell’s Lane. Near the rear of the spacious yard is a potting shed surrounded by purple and yellow day lilies, orange tiger lilies, red crocosmia, geraniums, Boston ivy and a trumpet vine. Hollyhocks decorate the shed’s door.

“The windows are not real,” Miriam Byrne said of the potting shed. “They are just screwed on for effect.”

The rest of the yard includes an organic vegetable garden with integrated pest management, a cutting garden for perennials and annuals, a water garden that includes goldfish and an apple tree that has five types of apples grafted onto it.

The home with its lawn full of native plants and flowers is one of six gardens on Aquidneck Island that are included in this weekend’s master gardeners’ tour, “Gardening with the Masters.”

In all, the tour includes 38 gardens across the state designed and maintained by University of Rhode Island Master Gardeners that will be open for tours Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine.

Tickets for the tour cost $20 and are available in Newport County at selected garden centers.

The master gardeners’ mission focuses on education, outreach and sustainability.

Miriam Byrne has been a master gardener since 2007 and will receive a pin in September for 500 hours of volunteer work with the organization that promotes environmentally sound gardening practices.

“I love this,” she said of her garden and her volunteer work with the URI Master Gardeners. “We do a lot of outreach work and set up kiosks at events all over the state. People come to us with garden questions.”

She said she likes hanging out with gardeners because of what she learns from them.

“You learn something new with everyone you meet,” she said. “I have learned a huge amount from the master gardeners association.”

She and her husband brought their gardening skills with them when they emigrated from Ireland about 18 years ago. She came from County Cork, and he lived in Cork City.

“I always loved gardening,” Miriam Byrne said.

“It’s probably in my blood,” her husband added. “My grandparents had a nursery in Ireland, and my dad ran that as well. I have always been teetering around the garden.”

Besides the flowers, bushes and trees, their garden includes bird houses and even a bat house, because bats will eat mosquitoes. Around the perimeter of the vegetable garden are yellow and orange marigold plants that help repel insects and, some say, keep rabbits away. The path around the vegetable garden is covered with crushed seashells for decoration.

Various flowers around the deck draw butterflies which become so friendly that they land on people.

“Small kids who visit us just love it,” John Byrne said. “They are sitting there on the deck and monarch butterflies land on them. They absolutely love it.”

Hummingbirds are attracted by the honeysuckle bushes, and frogs are drawn to the goldfish pond. Their chorus can be heard at dusk.

The Byrnes agreed that gardening is a lot of work. He said they recently figured that they work in the garden about 45 hours a week. That is in addition to their full-time jobs. He is the senior property manager for Phoenix Property Management, which manages Harbor House in Newport, West House and Forest Farm Assisted Living in Middletown and Sandy Woods Farm in Tiverton. She works at Newport Hospital and is a receptionist at the Vanderbilt Rehabilitation Center.

“We hang out all the time in the garden,” Miriam Bryne said. “We are either working in it or hanging out on the deck admiring it.”

“It’s a labor of love,” John Byrne said.

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